Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

Page 851

Basically, most of the domestic ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) games are exclusively developed by Spark. Furthermore, Spark uses the money it earns from ACG games to launch the Candlelight Project. There are also quite a few overseas game developers who have received investment from Spark.

Their game is also exclusive to Spark.

Although these games may only account for less than 1% of the entire game market, they are exclusive. The reason they are exclusive is that when players see the game online, they will download it from the corresponding platform.

WEGAEM has no base.

With its self-developed games failing to produce any blockbuster hits and its licensed games mostly featuring Bao Si, WEGAEM effectively abandoned its overseas strategy in 19 and shifted its focus to domestic defense by partnering with established domestic manufacturers.

They want to leverage traffic to solidify WEGAME's position in the domestic market.

But as time went on, it was 19.

After several head-to-head battles at the end of 19, both Ma Xiao of Penguin Games and Ma Huateng, the CEO of Penguin, realized a very critical issue.

That means WEGAME seems unable to even hold onto the domestic market.

Strictly speaking, Tencent Games could completely abandon WEGAME, or just let WEGAME languish like this, since even without WEGAME...

On mobile devices, Tencent Games still has an advantage, with Honor of Kings remaining the largest game in China.

Moreover, mobile devices are less dependent on gaming platforms. Even the Spark app's success is due to its integration of features such as game downloads, game news, animation playback, and globally customized variety shows.

In fact, Spark's rankings are often higher than those of video software rankings, so Tencent Games is not afraid of Spark in the mobile game market at the moment, and it is not impossible for them to completely abandon the PC platform.

However, this is where the problem arises.

Everyone initially thought that PC games were dying out and that mobile games would take over. But now, with the huge success of Spark on both PC and mobile, people have reversed their opinion; indeed, mobile games have a much higher penetration rate.

The problem is, computer coverage isn't bad either.

Moreover, the users who are computer users are actually more willing to pay and more willing to play games in depth.

Many people have also realized that it wasn't that the PC version of the game had died out, but rather that no one was playing the low-quality, pay-to-win online games made in China, especially considering the single-player game market.

Globally, the single-player game market has been growing.

In China, after the cycle of the Spark dual-platform, the PC platform has once again become a hot commodity.

Moreover, mobile devices also have to share revenue with Apple, Google, and the domestic market.

However, on their own PC platform, all revenue is considered income.

Ever since.

Penguin Games is stuck here; I can't log in to WEGAME, and I can't download it either.

Spark Games has already achieved economies of scale. Just like how Weishi's CPU couldn't beat Douyin even when it was burning up, WEGAME will have a hard time beating Spark.

However, Penguin Games did not want to lose its voice, so after multiple rounds of analysis and argumentation, Ma Xiao gave Ma Huateng a suggestion.

Completely abandon overseas markets and shift to domestic competition.

"As long as we give up overseas markets, our enemies will become our friends, and EPIC and Steam can become our allies."

"It's not entirely impossible that we could even collaborate with Steam and share a game library."

"Technically, it's not entirely impossible."

Ma Xiao's report mentioned that it was not entirely impossible technically, which also indirectly revealed another issue: it might be difficult to achieve in other aspects.

The biggest challenge is whether Steam is willing to cooperate.

At first, Ma Xiao thought this would definitely be difficult, since Steam is already usable in China and the country has adopted a relatively open approach in this regard as the Spark program expands overseas.

However, to Ma Xiao's surprise, Steam was very interested in Penguin's proposal.

In the past, when a country tightened its policies, Steam was able to cooperate with Perfect World. Now, although there are no national policies, for Steam, the competition with Spark is probably more difficult than national policies.

“We are now discussing the specific details.”

Ma Xiao said this with a smile on her face.

According to the plan, the collaboration between Tencent and Steam will adopt an embedded marketing approach, that is, adding a Steam channel within WEGAME, so that players can see the game's tag when selecting a game in WEGAME.

A game labeled WEGAME is provided by WEGAME, while a game labeled Steam is provided by Steam.

Chapter 504 Win-Win?

In this way, Steam can benefit from Tencent's traffic, and Tencent can benefit from Steam's accumulated game library. The core of the current discussion between the two parties is the revenue sharing model and Steam's desire for Tencent's account data.

In other words, as long as a player buys a game through Steam on the WEGAME platform, that account becomes one that can be logged into on both WEGAME and Steam.

However, the penguin is still thinking about this.

Regarding revenue sharing, Penguin Games wants to take 50% of the profits, which Steam feels is too high.

Interestingly, although Steam felt that Penguin's revenue sharing demands were too high, it did not directly reject them.

Because this timeline is being constantly eroded by the sparks.

Steam's profits in China are plummeting, and Chinese players often choose Spark over Steam when faced with the choice between the two.

The biggest problem in the collaboration between Steam and Tencent was originally the division of profits, but now, Spark has solved most of this problem.

For penguins, losing market share is the priority; saving market share is the most important thing.

For Steam, this also means losing the Chinese market. Even if Tencent takes 50%, it's still better than gradually moving towards zero.

Furthermore, by integrating with WEGAME, they can quickly regain the market share in China that Steam lost.

To give a somewhat illustrative example.

It's a bit like a civil war now. One side can't win, so instead of thinking about how to strengthen its own capabilities, it decides to call for foreign aid.

"Alright, let's get this settled quickly, preferably before the financial report is released."

Ma Huateng sighed.

He didn't really approve of the plan.

Honestly, he still hopes that the company can compete with Xinghuo based on its own strength.

However, he also saw it on New Year's Day.

Just as Ma Huateng gradually accepted that Douyin is better than Tencent's Weishi, he also gradually accepted the rise of Xinghuo in the gaming industry, thankfully.

For the gaming industry, Tencent also has overseas partners to form alliances with.

TikTok is truly unbeatable worldwide.

His only remaining requirement for Ma Xiao was that the cooperation be completed before the annual financial report was finalized.

After all, this year's financial reports are really bad.

Starting in the second half of 19, Tencent's stock price has been slowly declining. This decline is due to the market's decreasing expectations for Tencent's core revenue, namely game revenue.

If the financial report doesn't show any improvement, there's a possibility that the stock price might fall further after the report is released.

“Okay, Mr. Ma, I’ll fly to the United States right away to personally implement this project.”

Ma Xiao's face was full of smiles.

He's really not good at making games, but when it comes to discussing collaborations, especially large-scale ones, he's extremely knowledgeable, even quite professional.

~~~

It's mid-April now.

The afterglow of the recently concluded Spark New Year's Eve event has not yet dissipated.

A new round of major events has occurred.

Steam has officially announced the name of its handheld console, Steam Dack, and announced a press conference to be held on January 15th. At the same time, a long list of guests for the press conference has also been announced.

In terms of prestige, Gabe Newell (GabeN) holds a certain position in the industry, and Steam is currently maintaining its dominance in its competition with Spark.

Therefore, apart from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, the three major console manufacturers, almost all other major Western companies were present. Then, following Steam Dack, Tencent Games announced that its handheld console would also hold a press conference on January 15th.

At first, these two news items did not evoke any particular associations.

Most people are talking about Steam Dack. It seems like overnight, the game console industry has suddenly become very popular, especially the handheld console sector.

As for Tencent's announcement of its handheld console, it garnered some attention in China, but almost no one abroad was interested.

What really made this matter escalate was...

When Steam announced its presentation, including the flowchart and partners, Tencent Games was prominently listed. Not only was it listed, but there was even an advertisement for the Tencent handheld console during the presentation.

"Oh! So you two are the same thing after all..."

"Wait a minute!! How did you two end up together?!"

It was only at this point that many domestic media outlets and gamers were shocked to discover that Tencent had somehow gotten involved with Steam.

Meanwhile, as this buzz continued to grow, Tencent officially announced on January 13 that Tencent Games and Steam had reached a partnership.

At the same time, the WEGAME integration plan was proposed.

This means that the WEGAME platform will be integrated with the Steam game library, and the two will share the game lineup. At the same time, when domestic manufacturers log in to WEGAME, they will also log in to Steam.

As for the specific revenue sharing model and promotion model, please stay tuned.

As soon as the words "Stay tuned" were released, Tencent's stock price, which had been declining for several months, surged.

no way.

Although some players mocked Penguin, saying that Penguin was letting a wolf into the house and had no shame for money, from the perspective of capital, Penguin's move did make them feel that Penguin had found a way to deal with Spark.

The CEO of 360 even released a video specifically about this.

"After we finished the 3Q War with Tencent, I called Jack Ma and said, 'You're such a big company like Tencent, is it really necessary to be so greedy?'"

“You’re not experts in everything either. If you’re optimistic about an industry, you don’t necessarily have to do it yourself. You can invest, right? You have money, so go ahead and invest.”

"Leave professional matters to professionals; that's the right way, isn't it?"

"I heard that Tencent and Steam have been entangled recently, and I feel that I have let Xinghuo down. I really shouldn't have said those things to Lao Ma back then. Lao Ma really listened to them."

Leaving aside the details of the 360 ​​boss boasting in his video, his attitude represents the views of many investors, laymen, and even ordinary people on this matter.

That means penguins 1+1 is greater than two.

"Isn't this just like a domestic mobile phone manufacturer taking Apple's system and using it on their own phones? It's bound to be a hit. In fact, I'm wondering why Steam would agree to this."

~~~

imperial capital.

A hot spring hotel.

Ma Xiao and Li Weixi are checking the press conference script together.

Chapter 505 Comparing People

There are rumors that Steam and Tencent have joined forces, but in reality, while they have, the partnership is not as strong as people imagine.

At present, the discussion has only focused on licensing the Steam game library.

In other words, Tencent is currently unilaterally driving traffic to Steam. After the press conference, players will be able to buy Steam games on WeGame.

Although, as always, we still need to use an accelerator to go around in the middle.

However, as things have evolved, accelerators have become a bundled launcher, and even mainstream game platform accelerators now come with a built-in function for locking and painless launch.

Once you install it, opening Starfire or WeGame will automatically activate the accelerator, thus enabling Steam to officially connect to Tencent's traffic.

Penguin can also achieve a "snake swallowing an elephant" scenario, instantly expanding its inventory to surpass that of Spark. Moreover, since Spark has exclusive games, Penguin now also has exclusive Valve games.

In addition, after being forced by Spark in the past year or two, Steam has also been expanding its development team, and Gabe Newell, who used to be unable to count to 3, can now count to 3.

In fact, there is only one reason why Gabe Newell (GabeN) can't count to 3: there isn't enough pressure. In its previous life, Steam dominated the PC platform, making it a typical monopolistic market.

Making money while lying down, how is Gabe Newell (GabeN) supposed to count to 3?

Now that Starfire is under a lot of pressure, Gabe Newell (GabeN) not only knows how to count to 3, but also has a remastered version. In a way, even the most loyal Steam fans should thank Starfire.

However, they certainly wouldn't feel that way.

"When we go on stage, what should we focus on? Should we talk about handheld consoles or platforms?"

Li Weixi and Ma Xiao are discussing the press conference on the 15th. Although Steam and Tencent have a partnership, they will still hold their own press conferences.

After all, the target market groups are different.